Literature is the best and sometimes the best literature is not presented in a classroom. Quirky and coy, sometimes content is awkward; therefore, you can read these honest book reviews before cracking the covers. This website contains Google Analytics and AdSense cookies to track marketing information, such as, clicks on links and views.

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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Jung by Vivianne Crowley

The entire title is "Jung: Journey of Transformation." Crowley focuses on facts surrounding Jung's life with an additional notes relating to his greatest accomplishments in contributing to modern psychology. Oddly, the book is a composition of summaries, yet reads like a textbook.

Carl Jung was born in Switzerland and chosen to take over Freud's work. Freud was interested in standard adult life of married and established couples. Jung was interested in the clinically ill, magically minded and superstitious. The only agreement is an acknowledgment of ailments beginning during youth or trauma. This created a divergence in psychological studies though frequently offering a compliment.

Jung's greatest observations include establishing the characteristics of extrovert, introvert, sensitive and intuitive behaviors which became the foundation for the Myer-Briggs personality test for job placement. In Jung's philosophy, no one is ever wrong as much as misunderstood and in need of someone who will listen to what they are saying.

Vivianne Crowley graduated from the University of London with a PhD and became a Psychology Professor at King's College. Despite this, she is most notable as a High Priestess of WICCA. This information is important, yet it does not supersede having a graduate degree.

Frequently when reading the book, through remaining dry and factual, there is an underlying theme implying the topical points are intentional to assist people Crowley met through religious connections. This is fine and most points are important to most people suffering internal conflict under duress of ongoing stereo-types and media influence.

One point of interest involves shadows and obsession. The shadow, as explained by Jung through Crowley, explains how the shadow is an underdeveloped aspect of a person's personality. When encountering someone who exhibits their shadow a person might feel aggravation towards the person embarrassing the characteristic. Frequently the same actions produce faulty results. When ignoring aggravation a person learns to improve a personality deficit; ergo, it no longer controls them.

There are a handful of meditations, yet the book is mostly a summary or collection of various studies to offer ideas for further research. Topics are treated as an abstract with additional abstract expressionism to support the overall concept. The artwork was commissioned from museums. While beautiful, frequently the artwork does not coincide or offer a perspective, though enjoying the use of lines and shapes.

Everyone might benefit from reading the book. The trivia knowledge offers an escape route when people are overly dogmatic with judgments in relation to personal values. Specific to current trends in social conduct there will be at least one intellectual offering to improve ethical treatment of people. Unfortunately, its orientation is extremely technical, so every sentence is important as opposed to longer stories wherein in-depth visualization of topics are gleaned, reiterated and formed over greater amounts of text.